Potential Album Title

Scream Bloody Virgin- Permanent Failure

Nope, hold the phone. Here we go.

Scream Bloody Virgin- Meaningful Hangovers

Hmmmm looks a bit hokey in print. Might be better as a lyric in some Jeff Tweedy-ish kinda song. Must chew on it a bit.....

Space

I haven't done a good music philosophy post in a while, so here goes.

Walking around the city today my iPod switched over from Clipse ("Chinese New Year) to Dream Theater ("The Silent Man"). Now I was really enjoying the Clipse song. Ben turned me onto him a little while ago, and I think it is one of the more interesting commercial hip hop albums I have heard in a very long time. Granted I am not an expert on the subject, but I like the blend between the abstract and the booty shaking. The Dream Theater song starts as simple as can be, with a strummed acoustic guitar. Which sounded beautiful. Absolute beauty. Hot puppy sleeping in the grass on a lazy summer afternoon kinda of beautiful. You could hear the care that went into the room and mic placements. Then the voice comes in on top and everything is in a beautiful space. It sounded like Petrucci and LeBrie were sitting on 14th street performing for me in a cavernous yet acoustically precise theater.

Clipse had no space. Clipse has no instruments. Everything is completely virtual and compressed up the wazoo. Clipse doesn't want to be the quietest mp3 on the iPod. Listen to any recent metal album from the last 2 years. Hell, listen to a lot of recent indie releases like that Arcade Fire abomination. Can you envision where it was recorded? Can you see the room? The downside of freely available high quality recording solutions is we have lost our sense of space. I am 100% as guilty of it as anyone else. Listen to my music. It sounds like it was recorded somewhere in the Matrix. You can't envision my environment. There isn't an environment. My music is made somewhere between lines of code in emulation software. The most my music breathes is when I use drum samples that were blatantly recorded in a real drum room.

No wonder a higher quality music format was never accepted by the public and we all collectively took a step back with mp3s. What would you even want to listen to in high definition audio? All my favorite DVD Audio discs are 20-30 year old albums. People have started working very hard to make albums sound louder and bigger and heavier and more epic. But who is striving to make music sound *better*? Who is the next George Martin? Glyn Johns? Tom Dowd?

Shit the Gods of Fire aren't even using real DRUMS on the next album. And we were seen as relics for using a real kit on the first record. There are a lot of problems with Wrath of the Gods, but you can hear where it was recorded. You hear imperfections in my amp. You can hear the natural inconsistencies in the drumming. Unfortunately it is a losing war. I have shamefully stepped back from all of my analog ideals in favor of louder bigger and heavier.

How are you supposed to get kids to go to rock concerts if they don't even know what a rock room is supposed to sound like? I was pretty shocked the first time I saw a band called Death by Stereo use severe vocal and full mix compression during their set opening for Mastodon. The Bowery Ballroom no longer sounded like a concert venue. There were just pretty dudes sounding like the iPod. I'm sure I wouldn't survive a Linkin Park or Good Charlotte show, or any of those people. Trying to make your music "sound like the records" now means to do as much as possible to remove the live environment as possible. So when you are in a space, you are still in a virtual world.

As I plunge deeper and deeper into the matrix and forget everything I originally loved about recorded sound I hear a beautifully played acoustic guitar reminding me that we all feel relaxed with a little bit of space.

Austin is go!

Plane tickets and hotel have been reserved! Now we all just gotta hope Ms. Bollocks makes the roster!

She already warned me that I will be referred to by everyone as "Mr. Bollocks" since no one knows me. I'm pretty fine with that. Since I play the rock and roll and always try to get involved in cool or offbeat things usually a girl is tagging along with me. I think it is pretty rad that the roles are being reversed and I'm the person supporting, not being supported. This time I'll be the person tagging along. I will make new friends among the "derby widows" as they are apparently called.

Not that it sounds like there will be any shortage of things to do. Aside from checking out the games and the official burlesque show after-party, I am grilling Graham for a list of awesome shit and BBQ. Apparently I need to see a movie at the Alamo Movie House. Any one got any other suggestions of fun things to do?

Unfortunately we are going to be there right after the Austin City Limits festival so rock shows are rather limited. The only thing that even hits the radar is Interpol/Liars at Stubb's. Shitty bands from Brooklyn that I do not want to see when I am here are going to be in Texas the same time as me! Woo?

Shows!

Well now that the Cure have fagged out what am I seeing?

Funny you ask.....

9/8 Heaven and Hell/Alice Cooper/Queensryche
9/25 Steve Vai
9/26 Megadeth
10/5 Melvins/Big Business
10/9 Qui (David Yow from Jesus Lizard)
10/15 Bad Religion
11/30 Ween

Schedule is looking a bit weak. Gotta find more love to fill it with. What should I be seeing?

F- the Cure

So the Cure canceled their US tour to work on their new album. I guess looking at that recent photo of them on the left it is a mixed blessing. It is like someone spliced a Pride parade with LARPers. Ehhhh fuck 'em. That last album really sucked anyway. If Jon can't get behind them anymore how am I supposed to? No but seriously I wanted to sing "Why Can't I Be You" at karaoke yesterday but there wasn't any in the book. Looks like the Japanese are done with the Cure also.

The least worst of "Latency Issues"

Yes, a "clip show!" Chris remarked yesterday that he finally decided to see what the whole big deal of this blog was only to find the whiny depressing post. Well, for the uninitiated, here are what I consider some of the more interesting or funny posts I have done. This kids, is an exercise in self-indulgence that even takes me aback a bit, but that seems to be the theme of the week......

#1 The Ted Nugent post
#2 Please be as awesome as Rush
#3 What the hell do I do in the shower for 25 minutes?
#4 The Absinthe party
#5 The joy of sedatives
#6 How random is your iPod?

Dere you go. Happy Friday! What am I doing this weekend? First I'm going to see Dream Theater, then I'm going to see Dream Theater, and then Sunday night is BLOOD CITY SHACK UP with free beer! They are playing Trash in WillyB. Everyone should come out. Steve is a great friend of mine and one hell of an antagonistic frontman. They are on at 9, free beers start at 8. Yay!

BINGO!

This happened probably about a month ago now, but to counter the POD (post of depression) below, and since I saw this photo on my desktop with the intent to blog about it, here goes.

A few of us met up at Pete's Candy Store before heading over to McCarren Park Pool for a free screening of Repo Man. While drinking our beers a very organized game of bingo started up. So we all grabbed cards. When Graham's girlfriend Kat found out you can play up to THREE CARDS AT ONCE she went to town. The prizes changed every round. I won a juicer. My other option was corn on the cob holders which Kat was fiercely fighting for. I imagine I know what their housewarming gift will be when they find a new place............

OK Moratorium lifted on Bioshock

Bioshock is really hard. REALLY hard. And not nearly as fun as the hype. This is really the highest rated game in teh history of teh internets? Lawls?

Fuck. Either I suck at games really bad or I am missing something or I just need to give this some time.

Here is Bioshock: Ooooooh beautiful art deco room. Wow, the pictures on the wall smeared in blood are super creepy. Oh, I hear a woman on the left who probably wants to kill me. Let me sneak up..............................BOOM! The motion detecting turret that didn't see the bitch sees me and I'm laid out. Now I am re-spawned in a "Vita-chamber." Oh great. No more supplies and no money to buy more. I should go search this corpse..........BOOM! Motion detecting turret. Dead me. Game asks me if I would like a hint. OK, shoot. Game: Disable the turret. Me: I wonder what is taped on the DVR right now.

God I hope I'm missing something. I knew Ayn Rand adapted as FPS was too good to be true.......

State of the Union aka "It's my blog and I'll be emo if I want to"

2007 has been a hell of a year. 30 has been a hell of a year. There has been a lot of changes. Sad endings, new beginnings, new responsibilities both personal and professional.

I've been hitting a bit of a wall lately. I have been pretty bummed out and distracted in the past couple of weeks. Anyone who has noticed me not being myself or got caught in the cross-fire I am sorry. Certain things in my head that I should have sorted out months ago are now bubbling up in a major way. My biggest worry is not that I won't see them through, I certainly will, but that a lot of the good things in my life right now could become casualties in the process. That would of course be worse than anything I'm actually bumming over.

Yeah I was all happy about my doctor visit and the absurd amount of Valium I was prescribed but I have also been thinking about and listening to the Firewater record Psychopharmacology. This time the link will work, I promise, they are an active band again. But back to the point. "The thing you can't accept/is this is all you get/you want a second chance/but all you get are pills." I am happy I received what I did, and I am sort of in a place when I need it, but I am quickly finding out pills are not the solution to the world's problems. Music, however, may be.

Onto some positives. My studio. One of the greatest things I have done for myself. It has been a great source of comfort and creativity and I am very proud of everything I have learned. Gods of Fire will make a great record there. I am also surprised at how my music has come along. All those Scream Bloody Virgin tracks really are an audio diary of those inner emotions I don't really let anyone see. It is very fitting that the first song I wrote was "Edge of the Galaxy, " which was written right after an emotionally complicated break-up, two dates that ended very poorly, and the beginnings of a new job that I started to really regret taking (which I no longer do). There was so much catharsis in writing a song reminding myself that there are no life paths. Every moment of every day you have the option to completely change your life. And although I am the worst creature of habit I have spent much of the last six months since writing that song challenging myself, forcing new experiences, and becoming the proverbial "Master of my Domain." I've been listening back to a lot of this music (not all of which I have let people hear) and it is very positive to see how far I have come. Which is also why this minor step back is all the more striking and painful.

But anyway these are the positives.......

I *may* go to Austin at the end of September for the Roller Derby finals (which the GGRD qualified for with a vengeance that is almost reminiscent of the classic victories of the Harlem Globetrotters). I need out of this city for a few days. I need to leave my beloved Brooklyn for a few days. I just need OUT. No Blackberry, no internets, no checking my work website every night at midnight. Just a complete exit off the grid. It may be good for me and everyone around me.

Bioshock makes me happy. It is like the New Yorker gone totally nuclear. The Art Deco look of the game is gorgeous. Tonight being my only day without plans I am going to really allow myself into Rapture for a good look-see. Also I'm putting a moratorium on discussing Bioshock. I know all three of you don't give a SHIT and I'll keep it to the message boards. But oh, Kotaku has never seen me post so much ever........

Anyway, that's about it. Just a quick check in from my part of the world that is not going out to rock shows and watching Judd Apatow productions. An intercepted ghost transmission from the part of me that everyone knows is there, but I never let anyone see. This weekend is not one but two Dream Theater concerts, one from the 4th row and one from the VIP section. So the normal witty banter will return ASAP. Promise.

Too much metal for one hand,
scd

Bioshock has arrived

That's right. The box comes with a toy. How is that for knowing your target audience? I am not sure if I should take the "Big Daddy" out of the wrapping, or leave it in the box for the "portal effect" while I display it. God damn how busy I am today. I feel that "seizure" kicking in!

I'm Seth, now lets have another drink to ME

Of COURSE I loved Superbad. It was sort of like my auto-biography, but that would have been me in college, not high school.

McLovin is the next-gen Shermanator.

Now lets move on to more important things..............

This aggression will not stand, man.

Seeing "usually ships in 24 hours" is far superior to the words *BACK ORDERED* that were displaying a few hours ago, but with $10 expedited shipping I wanted to see a gosh danged tracking number already.

I have crafted an ingenious plan to fake a seizure at the office tomorrow and run home as soon as the UPS guy shows up.

A vision of hell

I have seen a vision of what hell awaits for me at the end of the road and it is an escalator in thin air 39 stories above ground. Click on the link for more pictures.

Yikes.

Healthy Body, Sick Mind

A few random life thoughts.

#1- There are two kinds of hypochondriacs in the world. Those who spend their lives at the doctor, and those who fear the doctor. Both kinds constantly diagnose themselves over the internet. I am of the latter. Which is why most people who go to a doctor's visit and get a clean bill of health just go on with their day, but for me has been a week long celebration. In fact some of you reading this may have already gotten IMs or texts with the news. Everything is tip top, good cholesterol is high, bad cholesterol is low, just need to shed a few more pounds. Rock!

#2- It is mostly Lee, but there has been chatter in my ear about starting a Scream Bloody Virgin band. I imagine I would call it Scream Bloody Virgin. I don't think I would try to do it full time, the last thing the world needs is another failed local band. However I could see doing the random one-off show. What do people think? Anyone want to be in a theoretical/hypothetical band?

#3- I am trying to step up my social life a bit in anticipation and fear of video game season. The addition of the Wii to my life has brought me a lot of time playing Paper Mario and Resident Evil 4 when I should be making music or being out of the house. When guests are over Mario Strikers Charged gets broken out. Now on Tuesday Bioshock comes out, a first person shooter based on the writings of Ayn Rand. No, really. I pre-ordered the special edition that comes with a figurine and a soundtrack CD. No, really. Also in the next couple of months we are being cursed with Halo 3, Metroid Prime 3, Stranglehold and Eternal Sonata (an RPG based on the life of Chopin). What the hell am I going to do? I may need to take a week off of work just to play games.

After Effects- one last show, Joe Satriani

So last night there was one last show from the series of insanity. I went to the Blender Theater at Gramercy- a Live Nation venue (isn't that a mouthful???) to see Joe Satriani's 20th anniversary presentation of Surfing with the Alien.

First, Turcotte and I had an amazing dinner at Curry Leaf in that Indian section of Lexington. I HIGHLY recommend this restaurant. They are owned by my favorite spice merchants Kalustyans. Everything was so spiced out it, it was almost like curry pornography (tm). Even the samosas were oozing with delicious flavor.

So we get to the venue, and I have to say it is AWESOME. It is rather small. I would say the floor holds about 400 with another 100 or so in the small mezzanine. It is bigger than the Knit, but smaller than Bowery. And the sound was pretty amazing. I don't know if the credit goes to Satch's team or the venue, but everything was amazingly pristine.

The show? WOW! I was completely blown away! I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was. The first hour was Satch playing through the entire Surfing record with a band, stopping in between every song to tell little anecdotes. This was actually a lot more interesting than my expectation. I was nervous it was going to devolve into a guitar clinic, but he is very personable and kept a good balance between guitar nerdery, and some genuinely interesting stories about the making of the record.

He is such a tasteful player. He kind of kicked off the whole instrumental guitar thing, but he really isn't a shredder in that classic sense. Although true he may have invented the genre, he does not wank like everyone else in his wake. There is such a musicality to his playing, and he phrases and sings on the instrument like no one I have ever heard. His music is genuinely catchy and hum-able and have verses and choruses. The second half of the show kicked off with "Flying in a Blue Dream" and then the band played for a full extra hour without any more talking. Although I didn't remember the names of anything, I recognized all these songs I hadn't heard in ten years. How many instrumental artists have made music that is instantly recognizable and singable? What a great night.

The band mentioned they were heading over to the bar area to hang out, but we had a birthday party to go to on Bleecker so off we went, and a little trouble began. Much of the time spent at the Red Lion is very hazy, but I do remember the mediocre cover band's drummer was none other than our buddy Johnny Mac. I gotta hand it to that guy, he definitely makes a living playing drums. He is working seven days a week, playing with anyone from Yngwie Malmsteen to a Bleecker street cover band.

A long week of shows Pt. 3- Symphony X

Saturday night Jason Heidi and I went to my favorite out of town venue the Starland Ballroom to see New Jersey's hometown heroes, Symphony X. Their bassist Mike Lepond played in the Ross the Boss Manowar show with Keith and I have sang his praises on this blog before.

If you are unfamiliar with the band, they are the more hard rocking, down to earth foil for Dream Theater in the prog rock scene. The analogy I always make is they are the Rolling Stones to Dream Theater's Beatles. They are fulfilling a LOT of fantasies by touring together in Europe later this year. As DT are arguably the leaders in terms of pushing forward progressive music and being better artists, there is something amazingly earthbound about SymphX. They are drunks. They are accessible. They will talk to you. Heidi thought Russell waved at us as they left the stage before the encore. I wouldn't be surprised if Russell did remember us from Dingbatz. They are that kind of band. Drink whiskey with them and you have friends for life.

The set was almost identical to the one they did at BB King's a few months earlier. Most of the new record, and some great old favorites like "Smoke and Mirrors." I'm sorry to say but for the second time now, I was bored out of my skull during the encore of all 20 minutes of "The Odyssey" in its entirety. Jason nailed it. It is not a cohesive epic like Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons." It feels like they wanted to write a 20 minute song and sewed a lot of incongruous parts together. It sounds stilted and forced. But anyways.....

Russell Allen is a frontman and a half. He must be about 6'4 and 300 pounds. A gargantuan of a man with a very powerful and commanding presence. Michael Romeo is now getting into "faster than Yngwie" territory with his chops. As the BB King's show was very loose and casual, the Starland set was tight and polished and sharp. Good stuff, a great end to a very long week of rock shows.

A long week of shows Pt. 2- Daft Punk

Will do this random thoughts style, like my review of the Nuge.

Best celebrity sighting- Dennis Miller with two teenage boys
Most Obvious celebrity sighting- James Murphy

The visuals were out of control. It felt like I was rocking out at an alien invasion, where they truly do come in peace. To bring you funk. Their intro music was the Close Encounters theme, to really bring it all home.

On the horribly inefficient beer line a girl wearing pajamas started flirting with me. It was mostly uneventful (and all just in good fun Bollocks) but things went painfully south when I told her I was "spinning" the Girl Talk album a lot. This led to a quick conversation about how I am "old school" and still use the term spinning even if I mean listening to something on my iPod. When this led to her finding out I'm 30, she turned to the guy behind me who she said "looks like Zack Braff" (he didn't) and stopped talking to me. Yikes. Although, can't we take the word "spinning" back? Hard drives spin, right? But apparently I'm hitting the age where if I talk to a hipster girl in pajamas I am a pedophile.

As beautiful as the pyramid and the outside light structures were, the music was only OK. I thought the album versions of all of the Human After All songs are far superior. My favorite song, "The Prime Time of your Life" seemed like a perfect drugged out live show no-brainer. As it is on the record that song is perfect. The weird cutesy droned out remix took away a lot of the power and sentiment. On the flip side, the perfect synergy between sound and visuals on "Steam Machine" was one of my concert going highlights of the year.

Keyspan park is an awesome show venue and they do not oversell it. I will find an excuse to go back there next year.

Kraftwerk is still the best presentation of live electronic music I have ever seen, but Daft Punk was completely insane. I think those pics say much more than my words.

A long week of shows Pt. 1- Zappa and Deep Purple

So last week was pretty crazy in terms of the rock and roll.

Monday- Zappa Plays Zappa at Westbury Music Fair. Decent setlist. The addition of the video screens where daddy Zappa was projected and shown playing and singing was a nice touch. I don't think Dweezil would be able to sing low enough to hit Cosmik Debris without the assistance. The rotating stage at Westbury is a trip. The band was a bit freaked out as well. It was frustrating that the whole experience was very all or nothing. Either you saw the whole band or you saw the whole bands' backs. Ray White was a great guest but I missed Bozzio and Vai.

Tuesday- Deep Purple at Radio City Music Hall. Great set, mediocre show. That band is *old* and although Ian Paice is still a drumming whiz, this was an oldies show for an oldies crowd. Ian Gillian's voice is pretty blah at this point and there is not nearly as much of the biting rock energy that made me fall in love with this band in the first place. Your best bet is to stick with the records and archival dvds. Deep Purple in 2007 is just not a great show.

Wednesday- Kristin had to cancel plans, the subways stopped running, so I stayed in Brooklyn and spent my first good chunk of quality time with the Wii. I recommend everyone who owns one to pick up Paper Mario. It has some of the best art direction I have ever seen in a video game. It is like Dali and The Residents tried to put together a surrealist mash-up of classic 80's Nintendo platformers. I have never seen characters or locations look quite like this. Absolutely amazing. Beautiful and breathtaking.

Current concert schedule

8/15 Joe Satriani
8/24-8/25 Dream Theater
8/26 Blood City Shack Up
9/8 Heaven and Hell
9/23 The Cure
9/25 Steve Vai
9/26 Megadeth
10/9 Qui
11/30 Ween

Cooler Christians than you.......

They were hip enough to incorporate King Diamond and Chidren of Bodom into this. BEWARE BLUE OYSTER CULT! BEWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!

How to head bang without injury

Credit for this goes to Steve from back in his football days.

I am posting his suggestion like this as I discovered there are virtually no places on line to learn how to safely head bang. Lord knows I tried.

Lie on your bed facing up. Hang your head off the edge of the bed. Do reps of lifting your head up and down like sit ups. Lie on your left and right side. Rinse, repeat daily.

I will be starting tonight.

Rock!

Let's Reconsider- EMF

Hey kids! Welcome to a new feature on this humble blog. I'll never forget that day in the early mid 90's while bored and high in Larry's car and he could not believe I had never *really* listened to Devo. He put on a cassette of Hardcore Devo Volume 1, a now long out of print collection of their 4 track demos which was a pivotal moment in my musical development. Really? The guys who did "Whip It" and "Through Being Cool," the inspiration for Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" were actually analog synth geniuses and punk pioneers? Well, yes they are. And if we never had that bored evening driving around Syosset I would have never gotten it.

Well, we don't have cars and suburbs and pot anymore. We have blogs. So this is a new feature that will occur with no regularity. I will pick a band that I love that, unlike other blogs which try to feed you obscure music, you *have* heard of but would never think to really listen to.

Today's inaugural band is EMF. We ALL know "Unbelievable" and the renaissance that song has experienced with Stephen Colbert obsessing over their re-recording of the song for Kraft Cheese's "Crumbelievable" campaign.

But have you ever really listened to the band? They were a great punk band with lots of synths and a decent hard edge. Schubert Dip, that fateful breakthrough album had some great songs, notably "Girl of an Age" and "Travelling not Running," but for me the recording that blew me out of the water in High School was The Unexplained EP, so startlingly out of print that Amazon doesn't even have a listing for people to sell it used. But it was AWESOME. Only four songs, EMF used it to showcase that they were a much different band than one runaway hit single, and they WERE.

Submitted for your approval are the two bookends of this 4 song masterpiece. First up is "Getting Through." For fans of modern day synth-punk ranging from Kasabian to Primal Scream to the Chemical Brothers, you should feel right at home. Listen to how wonderfully the hard panned synth on the left blends with the big guitars hard panned to the right. Then we move right into their cover of "Search and Destroy." Yes, the Stooges song. As it is below I'm not even going to try to explain or sell this to you. If you are reading this, you most likely know me and know how much I love the Stooges. How much I love Raw Power. How much I love SEARCH AND DESTROY. This is the best of the untold covers of this song by virtually every band ever. Yeah that's right. The BEST. Fire up the best headphones you have and enjoy the exceptional production in this 320k encoded Mp3. Go on. Enjoy. Treat yourself.

Let's reconsider EMF.

Direct download links. Right click and save!
Getting Through
Search And Destroy